obligation and islamic national moral and human obligation. joining me today, special correspondent for the "daily beast" michael tomaski who is also the editor of "democracy, a journal of ideas." host of msnbc's disrupt, karen finney, and senior congressional reporter for talking points memo, sahil kapor. joining us from cairo is ayman mo mohadean. we've talked about how dramatically this scene has changed. if you look back at the scenes from earlier in july, there were laser lights, a sense of jubilation in the square. couple that with images of today and this week, the violence, 600 people dead. give us if you will the latest, the feeling on the ground in terms of the movement, the seeming ground swell of support for ousted president mohamed morsi. >> reporter: well, you know, if

there's one way we can describe egypt over the course of the last several weeks and last several years, it's every time there's a moment of opportunity, it seems to be squandered. even if there was any silver lining in the removal of president mohamed morsi, that seems to be disipitating by the day. we're already getting reports of a spike in the death toll. today was the day that many people were hoping wouldn't be violent. unfortunately, it is turning out to be just as deadly as some of those in recent memory. according to members of the muslim brotherhood and the anti-coup coalition, already alone in the main square, the area they had called on all their supporters to try and converge to, we're getting reports that at least 45 people have been killed. the ministry of health officially says 27, but we are expecting that number to rise. now, this is only in one part of cairo. in other cities across the country, we're also getting other reports of fatalities, so that number is expected to rise. cairo is very much a city on

lockdown. ahead of today's day of rage protests that were organized by the muslim brotherhood and their supporters, the military had deployed in large numbers in various parts of the city to try and shut down some of those major roads. and throughout the protests, we've seen civilians dressed in plainclothes but wielding weapons and essentially terrorizing some of the areas that they were walking through. so there's no right or wrong among both of these sides. that's what is making it so complicated and that's why it has alienated so many people, despite which side of the divide you're on and making it extremely volatile overall, alex. >> what's the situation in the rest of the country? we know the anti-coup campaign is calling for protests across the country in all of egypt's revolutionary squares. is the movement growing in other parts of the country outside of cairo? >> well, you know, the way that we often describe it is there are supporters and sympathizers with the anti-coup coalition. i think that's one of the ways

to keep it in mind. the actual members of the muslim brotherhood who make up the bulk of that organization and the muslim brotherhood, they themselves definitely number in the hundreds of thousands if not millions across the entire country. but the overwhelming majority of people in egypt have grown disenfranchised with the muslim brotherhood. they're not happy with the way they ruled. but aside from that there are a lot of people who are sympathetic to the kind of violence that is now being exacted on the supporters of the muslim brotherhood. people are very critical of this disproportierpgportionate use o pie the military and the security forces despite the fact they completely reject the muslim brotherhood or president mohamed morsi. that's why the con triuntry is extremely polarized between those who support the removal of president morsi but are not ready to commit supporting the egyptian military and security forces in the way they are

handling the situation. not only the individual citizens but some of the country's leading politicians as well and that's what led some of them to resign. >> i'm going to open this up to our panel here in new york. karen, seeing what's going on in egypt, the death toll, 600 people killed this week, there is growing frustration in the united states about what's happening in egypt. i want to read an excerpt from eugene robinson's excerpt which is highly critical of the president. he says there may be little the u.s. can could to end the savage blood letting in egypt but at least our nation can be loyal to its ideals by bearing witness and telling the truth. in this, president obama has failed. a day after egypt's military backed interim government slaughtered hundreds of protesters and assumed sweeping emergency powers, obama still could not bring himself to call what is happening a coup. he described it as an intervention. what do you make of that? >> particularly some of the other analysts have suggested that. i think we saw this when mccain and lindsey graham were there. the military said it's no longer a piece of leverage.

that's the explanation we were getting out of the administration, the money we were giving to the military, that's our leverage. that's not even a leverage point at this point. so to gene's point, there's not a good reason why we couldn't have come forward and taken a stronger stand. if the thing that we thought was going to be our lempverage poin is now gone, then we need to find a different leverage point or find a better way to stand on the side of the people. >> ayman, before we let you go, we talk every day about the role of the united states in all of this and there are now sort of renewed calls for the u.s. to end its military aid to egypt. that's $1.3 billion in military assistance. yesterday the president announced the end -- or postponing or cancellation of some planned joint military exercises and i asked you the effect of that in egypt. your response was it's basically a so what here in egypt. would the cutting off of american military assistance have an effect on the egyptian government in terms of what's going on, the violence that it's

perpetrating on citizens of egypt right now? >> well, that's somewhat to difficult to answer for a few reasons. one, the majority of u.s. aid goes to the egyptian military. very little of it actually goes to civil society and to the egyptian government at large, so it's more military to military relationship in terms of the training of the officer corps, the equipment that's used by the egyptian military. in recent weeks since this removal of president mohamed morsi, saudi arabia and the united arab emirates have given egypt or pledged to give egypt billions of dollars, more than the u.s. has given almost tenfold so there is no shortage of money that would come to support the interim government if in fact it needed to. the question really has to do more with that money and the leverage. right now the united states is perhaps, you know, the relationship between the united states and egypt is at an all-time low. yesterday the egyptian presidency issued a statement effectively saying that president obama's comments yesterday were aiding terrorists or was leading to the type of violence that would ultimately

lead to terrorism. the tone that's coming out of the egyptian government is that this is an internal egyptian matter, that egypt has complete sovereignty over its domestic issues, it knows its country better than anyone else and it will push ahead with what it needs to do regardless of what any country tells it, especially if it's the united states, which traditionally and historically had tremendous amount of leverage over the previous regime of president hosni mubarak. >> well, in that way you have weird symmetry with the president saying egypt is in the hands of the egyptians and the egyptians saying egypt is in the hands of the egyptian the. ayman, thank you as always, my friend. the "washington post" headline says it all. nsa repeated low broke privacy rules. the report based on a may 2012 internal audit of the nsa and passed along by edward snowden. documents over 2700 specific privacy violations by the spy agency over a single 12-month period. the "post" reports most of the

infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of americans or foreign intelligence targets in the united states. while the documents do not reveal how many americans were affected, they do appear to directly contradict what president obama said just last week. >> what you're not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and listening in on people's phone calls or inappropriately reading people's e-mails. what you're hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. now, part of the reason they're not abooufused is because these checks are in place. >> michael, these checks don't actually seem to be in place? >> yeah. >> a deep hmm. >> they sort of don't. this is a really problematic story for the administration. >> i think this one almost as much or more than anything else that's come out yet. >> i think this is going to swing public opinion which so

far has more or less held in the support of the view that we do need a balance and i do care about being protected and that some of this activity is perfectly fine as long as it keeps me safe. i think we'll see public opinion start to switch a little bit. it will be interesting to see what we hear on capitol hill about this. are the republicans -- is the right wing party in the united states really going to hold hearings and investigate the liberal administration over questions of surveillance and intelligence abuse? i suppose it's possible. >> or is the left or what will democrats do. to get specific on these violations, the washington post really interesting reporting. in the post they detail in one instance the nsa decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of americans. in another, the fisa court, which has authority over some nsa operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation many months. the court then ruled it

unconstitutional. i think that is incredibly damning, the fact that these operations were already under way and post hoc the court says this is a violation of the constitution. >> this is clearly going to have an impact on capitol hill. lawmakers will have a hard time ignoring this because of the response you've seen from the general public and the senate judiciary chairman, patrick leahy, announced today that he was going to hold a hearing into this. so what we've seen since these revelations came to light when lawmakers said what are you worried about, this happens all the time. now they're being forced to say, no, we need more oversight because a lot of times lawmakers don't want to get in the middle of the stuff, they want the nsa to do their work and nobody wants to be seen as disrupting an effort -- >> nobody wants to be seen as weak on terror, right? and that is -- i've said this over again. that's the third rail of american politics. >> of course. but the problem for the president and the administration right now is so clearly either -- i don't believe that he was misleading the american

people, but clearly when he made that statement, he did not have all of the information. >> right. >> so that's a big problem. >> yeah. >> because if there is that kind of an audit going on and the president doesn't know about it, and you're going to send him out in front of cameras to say something that contradicts that audit, that is a major problem. not only for -- in terms of safeguards and transpair anticipat -- transparency and security, that's a huge communication problem for the president. so even republicans aren't going to be able to ignore -- maybe that's the way they'll go after it and question the difference between the statements that have been made and what the documents are telling them. but i think you're going to see some strange bedfellows on this one. how can you ignore that? >> especially not republicans, right? we're actually seeing some evidence in town halls where lawmakers are getting a lot of flak for this. if you're a conservative and you distrust government, you dislike government, you don't think president obama is doing the right thing, of course they're going to be terrified at the idea that he has access to your private e-mail. >> and the president said over and over again, checks and balances, checks and balances,

checks and balances. now the post reveals that the leader of the fisa court that is supposed to provide critical oversight says its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on americans. that ain't no kind of checks and balances that i'm familiar with. >> it's not terribly reassuring and it's not in line with what obama said in his speech last week where he said he was willing to change the way that fisa court works. you know, it really changes the way that speech is received, i think, because in that speech he did actually make some effort to give up some executive power and to say to congress i'm willing to work with you on this. but now these events just kind of snowball that speech and leave him looking, you know, pretty damaged. >> to karen's point, he doesn't have all the information, which i think is perhaps the most terrify part of that. >> whoever let him go out in front of cameras and make that statement knowing that there was contradicting information should be fired, period. moving on, there are three -- well, three days after

signing the nation's most repressive voter i.d. bill into law and seeing his approval numbers fall off a cliff, the north carolina governor yesterday did something that might actually win him some support in the tar heel state. he vetoed a law requiring drug testing for north carolina welfare recipients. i mean i'm hard pressed to say congratulations, governor mccrory this week given what he's done on the voter suppression efforts, but this is a good thing that the governor has done. >> it is a good thing, although you have a number of other -- before we call it a profile in courage. >> i'm not doing that. >> there have been a number of other states looking at similar measures. in florida a judge has actually put a hold on it so he kind of knew this was one where, a, it's good politics based on what has gone on earlier this week and probably good for his poll numbers, but also he had -- probably knew if he went ahead and signed it, it was likely there would be a challenge to it

anyw anyway. >> and also on the same note, let's not forget about the voter suppression efforts he signed into law and he did sign an executive order requiring social security officers to verify applicants' criminal histories and share that information with law enforcement. this -- there are statewide efforts across the country to sort of, i think, establish a veneer of criminality who depend on social security net benefit programs. texas has approved drug testing for unemployment benefits, kansas has approved drug testing for welfare recipients and florida did approve it, although a judge ruled it unconstitutional. this is part of the larger republican narrative around earned benefit programs. those that need them are somehow the bad seeds. >> and we've been seeing that for a while. north carolina recently seems to have turned into a factory for the most hard right legislation you could possibly pass on a state level. you've seen legislation aimed at shutting down abortion clinics.

you've seen the voter i.d. laws and efforts to restrict same-day voting. the interesting thing about this welfare bill that he vetoed is it might get overridden and maybe he knew that. >> maybe, maybe. i will say this, michael, if you look at the actual stats, 2.6% of florida welfare applicants tested positive for illegal drugs, which is a rate three times lower than that for all floridians. this is, again, like the phantom menace. i'm paraphrasing hillary clinton, but -- >> it's like voter fraud, right? it's exactly like voter fraud. but we're here, alex, we're in this situation in north carolina because this guy and all the republican legislators won election in 2010 when democratic core constituencies didn't turn out to vote. so what the democratic party has to work on is making sure their people vote in off-year elections so these things don't happen. in really republican states, in

texas you're not going to change anything. but north carolina is a swing state. >> obama won it in 2008. >> he won it in 2008. north carolina, the politics can possibly be changed, but people have to come out and vote in off-year elections. >> as long as they can actually get to the voting booths and cast their ballots. >> the demographics are moving in favor of the democrats here as well so it may be just a matter of time, so we'll see. >> time is moving in favor of democrats. after the break, chris christie brought the real talk to his party's national convention last night. the gop has a problem, and it is not hillary clinton or the national broadcasting company. we will discuss autopsies, debates and elections next on "now." what are you doing? oh, hey. using night-vision goggles to keep an eye on my spicy buffalo wheat thins. who's gonna take your wheat thins? i don't know. an intruder, the dog, bigfoot. could you get the light? [ loud crash ] what is going on?! honey, i was close! it's a yeti! [ male announcer ] must! have! wheat thins!

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coming up after the 2012 election, governor bobby jindal offered this advice to his fellow party members. >> we've got to stop being the stupid party. i'm serious, it's time for a new republican party that talks like adults. >> yesterday governor chris christie did not name names, but told rnc he wasn't going to call them the stupid party and that the election is in fact over. translation, get over it, jindal. we will talk republican party cannibalism just ahead. ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker every day. ♪

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and cnn from hosting gop primary debates in 2016 if the networks move forward with their hillary clinton specials, claiming the projects show, quote, political favoritism. for weeks rnc chair reince priebus has been threatening to deny cnn and nbc the right to e ma moderate the debates. first network debates have gone on for years without rnc approval and the hillary program may end up being produced by fox television studios, the sister company of fox news. no word yet on the political favoritism over at that channel. ultimately the outrage seems to be providing cover for something that rnc has wanted to do ever since they lost the election in 2012, limit the number of debates, a key part of the gop's 2012 autopsy. in march, priebus explained the harmful effect of too many debates.

>> i believe that our primary process is way too long. i think our calendar needs to be looked at. i think our debate calendar needs to be shrunk. i would limit the debate to a reasonable amount. i don't know, maybe seven or eight, but not 23, bob. it's ridiculous. >> why ridiculous? because this is what happens when you give a deeply flawed candidate a year of air time on national television. >> i just want to say on behalf of all americans that i thank you for being willing to debate each other every ten hours, whether you feel you need it or not. >> you don't deport them, how do you send them home? >> the answer is self deportati deportation. >> contraception, it's working just fine. leave it alone. i tell you what, $10,000? >> i'm not going to eat barack obama's dog food. there are a lot of reasons not to elect me or other people on the stage. >> the clips of romney never really get old. you can just keep playing them until 2016. but karen this, yesterday, riens

priebus said using the word self deportation is a horrific comment to make. i don't think it has anything to do with our party. when someone makes those comments, when someone makes those comments, obviously it's racist. >> right. >> is reince priebus just making up to the fact of romney? >> he's finally realizing that the way to win is the less the gop candidates talk, the better their chances are. particularly given that some of the most horrific moments from those debates actually were fox debates. as much as they're blaming msnbc. and by the way, it was the candidates. if that's what they really think and believe, hey, you know, whether they say it on error not, that's going to be a problem. the idea that he thinks that a longer primary is a bad thing is really distressing too because from my perspective having

worked in party politics, it's a good thing because it means more people get to participate in the process. a candidate has to be vetted by more different parts of the country, different audiences, and i think that should be a good thing unless, again, you're worried that you need to limit the amount of time that your candidate, like mitt romney, is actually talking to people. >> you get self deportation out of it. sahil, what is distressing as karen points out is that the strategy seems to be narrow it, close the doors, make them less accessible on television, make it harder to exercise your democratic right to vote, shorten the primary calendar. none of this is actually in service of democracy. this is basically just keeping the doors closed to as few people as possible. >> it's one thing for reince to condemn the word self deportation but it's still part of the republican platform, the policy is, which is to encourage people to leave on their own. that's the whole idea behind it. i think that's what hispanic voters and the pro-immigration folks will be paying attention

to, what the policy is. not just the language and phrasing and messaging you use to limit the damage you do. >> but i don't even know if canary in the coal mine is the right expression, but he is clearly trying to sort of be an apologist for past sins and sort of work with what he's got. at the same time you have gop insiders saying they are considering for moderators in 2016 rush limbaugh, sean hannity and mark levin, which to me -- which to democrats seems like a great idea. if you thought had party had been pushed to the extreme, just wait until rush limbaugh is moderating the conversation. >> insanity. in one very narrow sense, i feel a little sympathy for reince priebus. the party chair is not the ideological chief of the party. you know this very well. you worked for howard dean. the party chair is supposed to do what, raise money, right?

that's basically -- >> win. >> and win. that's basically what the party chair is supposed to do. so he's like the burser in an insane asylum so in that sense i feel a little sorry for him. if they follow through on these things, it's complete insanity, completely undemocratic. to bar nbc and cnn because of something that nbc's entertainment division is doing and to bar the news division and to rely only on fox -- >> which is, incidentally, producing the hillary clinton biopic or whatever it is. >> by the way, i'm pretty sure if anybody thought a piece on mitt romney would sell advertising on cnn or nbc, they would do it. i thought we were for the free market. i thought we were for business. i mean the other piece of this, though, is increasingly look at all the things you were just listing, alex. as you were talking it made me think basically what they're saying is instead of changing and recognizing the country has changed, we can't do that, so we're just going to, again,

limit who can vote, limit when they can vote, limit how much our candidates actually talk to real people rather than saying, hey, maybe the party actually needs to change. >> i was saying this earlier. it's like they have their heads in the sand and are pushing the sand up against their necks and trying to get their shoulders in. but that is an important point and politico has a piece entitled "eve of destruction." not a big tee-up for anything but they write several influential republicans told us the party is actually in a worse place than it was november 7th, the day after the disastrous election. these republicans came into the year exceptionally hopeful the party would finally wise up and put immigration and irresponsible rhetoric and governing behind them. instead, republicans dug a deeper hole. >> yeah. >> yes. >> and it's all true. so all the stuff we're seeing on the presidential level, on the bigger picture level, what they need to do to rebrand as a party and appeal to more people, we're seeing it on a microlevel as well in congress. we have major fiscal deadlines

coming up to keep the government open, to prevent a default this fall and republicans are busy fighting each other. conservatives are erupting and exploding really furious that they won't take a stand and say we'll shut down the government or let it default if obama is not defunded. senior republicans recognize this is political suicide. there's nothing they can do about it. >> robert cost has a piece in the political review. shoutout, you heard it here. and he describes the machinations behind the scene between eric cantor and john boehner and the rest of the caucus as a wink wink kabooki dance of the highest order to placate the angry right flank and get them on board not shutting down the government over a continuing resolution. >> that's what they have been doing. since january speaker boehner has been making promise after promise to avoid the crisis at the moment. every time those promises have to get loftier and it becomes harder and harder to pull them back from the brink every time. this time what they're

considering is a two-month continuing resolution so you fold it in with the debt limit. they want to use that as a massive leverage point. you talk to the white house and talk to democratic leaders, there's not a chance they're giving anything up. they regret doing it in 2011 and at the end of the day this is congress problem, speaker boehner knows he cannot default and he's not going to let it happen. >> i feel like john boehner is like my parents when i was 4 and let's play the quiet game. finally i wised up but they definitely bought at least a couple of hours. >> if i could just say speaker boehner does deserve some credit in that he is doing everything he possibly can to be patient, to listen to his members and to at the very least do what he can to avoid actual blowups. there hasn't been a shutdown or default so far. imagine if you had newt gingrich or someone who's willing to force these confrontations in that position of speaker right now, you'd have much more disastrous situation for the country and for the party.

so speaker boehner is sort of buying the party some time by being patient. >> playing the quiet game. >> well, the difference is your parents stayed your parents. and whether he's going to stay speaker is another thing. >> that is true. as much as a teenager i tried to protest they were my parents. after the break, have we already lost the battle against climate change? chris hayes looks at the politics of power. that's coming up. "stubborn love" by the lumineers did you get my email? i did. so what did you think of the house? did you see the school ratings? oh, you're right. hey babe, i got to go. bye daddy! have a good day at school, ok? ...but what about when my parents visit? ok. i just love this one... and it's next to a park.

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according to a report out of stanford university this month, the earth is undergoing one of the largest climate shifts in 65 million years. specifically, since dinosaurs roamed the earth. tonight msnbc's very own chris hayes shines a spotlight on what he calls a problem without borders, destructive and deadly global warming. >> we have just passed 400 parts

per million of carbon in the atmosphere. your organization is called 350.org and that 350 stands for 350 parts per million, which scientists say is a safe level of carbon in the atmosphere. so the question is we're already past it by 50 parts per million. what do you see as the solution to bring the carbon level down to your organization's name? >> oh, there's no solution other than stopping burning coal and gas and oil and doing it fast. we're past the point where we're going to stop global warming. i mean we already melted the arctic, okay. so if we do everything right at this point, it will still be decades before we're back to 350 and a lot of damage will be done in the meantime. but if we don't do everything right at this point, that damage will escalate. it will be civilization scale. >> the politics of power with chris hayes airs tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. w price guarantee. got your list? let's go. jif peanut butter. peanut butter and jelly is a staple in our house

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i don't think it's going to be particularly constructive for us to have an open audition, if you will, for the fed nominee. >> unfortunately for the white house, the casting call is already out. while the president vacations in martha's vineyard, the white house continues to fend off criticism from within his own party from one potential nominee of the chair of the federal reserve. larry summers. or the man described by one former colleague as someone you sometimes feel like smacking. after a capitol hill meeting in which he scolded congressional democrats for their criticism of summers, last week president obama continued his not really promotional larry summers promotional campaign. >> i think the perception that mr. summers might have an inside track simply had to do with attacks that i was hearing on mr. summers preemptively which is sort of a standard washington

exercise that i don't like. >> but even after some scolding from the white house, senate majority leader harry reid remained highly skeptical of summerers as fed chief, saying ultimately it will be so divisive within the caucus it may not be worth it. further complicating summers' chances is a new bloomberg poll of economists that find a majority believe that janet yellin, not larry summers, would be the best pick for the job. senate democrats are currently circulating a letter supporting yellin but president obama has declared he needs some, quote, space to make a final decision. joining me now is cnbc's chief washington correspondent, john harwood. john, thank you for joining us on this friday afternoon. >> hey, alex. >> a lot of people think maybe we're making a big deal out of nothing, this pick. but at the end of the day president obama in that same press conference the other week said the federal reserve chair is not just one of the most

important policy makers, he is one of the most important policy makers in the world and that person will stay on after i'm president so this along with supreme court appointments is probably as important a decision as i make as president. i mean putting it on par with a scotus nomination. what do you think of it, john? >> absolutely that is correct. look, it is the most important appointment that we know the president is going to make in his second term. maybe he'll get a supreme court nomination. we saw that during the financial crisis when the choice of george w. bush, whose economic record was maligned by democrats for quite a long time, turned out to be a vital partner with president obama in trying to stop the financial crisis and get the recovery going. so we are not making too big a deal of it. the only thing that may be out of proportion is the speculation to knowledge ratio, because it's a very small number of people, the president and a few people

very close to him who really know his thinking, although i talked to a couple of people on the larger obama team today who continue to think that the odds are pretty strong that the president will in fact pick larry summers despite this flak. >> can i ask you, john, why -- why larry summers? if you look at his record, he blocked the regulation of derivatives when he was serving with president clinton. he advocated an appeal of glass-steagall, he pushed for a smaller stimulus in 2009 and resigned from harvard over sexist comments questioning women's aptitude in math and science. you compare that to janet yellin who warned about the housing bubble in 2005, she foresaw the credit crunch and has been deemed the most accurate federal reserve forecaster. i mean is it personal appeal? is it the relationship that they have? why the support for larry summers inside the white house? >> i don't think it's larry's personality, which has been kind of prickly and difficult for a

lot of people. but i think it's because just like president clinton before him, president obama has got a lot of confidence in larry summers. that doesn't mean he doesn't have confidence in janet yellen and he could end up picking janet yellen. he preemptively defended susan rice when she was getting knocked around by republicans for benghazi but did not pick susan rice for secretary of state. i think there is a tremendous regard for larry summers' grasp of the complexity of the modern economy and what it needs to get it go again. he certainly is somebody who meets the test the president has set of understanding that there is in fact a dual mandate for the fed, not just controlling inflation but also getting the economy going, and we've seen that from larry summers saying publicly over the last couple of years that this is a time when given where interest rates are, the ease of government borrowing, that the government ought to be spending a lot more, which runs against a lot of the

political currents in washington right now. >> john, i'm going to open this up to our folks in new york. this is also exposing a rift in the republican party and what they call the wall street wing of the democratic party, which is robert reuben, larry summers, and the main street wing which is elizabeth warren and others. sort of the progressives versus the moderates and thus this division is causing i won't say mutiny. but the fact is you have harry reid going up against the president's pick possibly. >> they have made it very clear, a number of democrats, privately, many publicly that they don't want larry summers. they have sort of done it by endorsing janet yellen. they wrote a letter and 19 or 20 signed it. harry reid knows it's going to be difficult. if the president does it, it's going to become harry reid's problem. but democrats very clearly want janet yellen. the one thing about larry

summers, the reason that the white house might -- the reason the president might pick him, everyone who knows him personally and has worked with him personally is enthralled by his intelligence and grasp of the issues. >> not by his personality. >> exactly. but that happens to include the president and his senior advisers. if they pick him, it will be for that reason even though janet yellen on paper has so many better qualifications. >> can i just say the whisper sexist campaign. larry summers is just so smart. janet yellen has a great record. ezra writes i've had a surprising number of discussions, karen, that follow the same pattern. yellen is great but either she looks toughness, she's short on gravitas, she's too soft spoeke or passive. >> those are some of the comments people make when we get the exact opposite about why people don't like larry summers' personality, because he's so brash, because he can be taken as offensive. but i think this will come down to, to some degree, and i would imagine the president knows

this, the politics in the fall. i mean if he's going to try to get harry reid to do something that is going to use a lot of political capital knowing the mess that the republicans have created, that they're going to have to also deal with in the fall, at some point you have to decide where are you going to spend that political capital. >> the last thing he needs is a fight against his own party. >> john, i want to -- i'm going to cut you off, i'm sorry. john, i know you're not a betting man. but if you had to bet, seeing from your vantage point right now, if you had to guess, yellen or summers, who would you pick? >> well, i've got to go with what the people close to obama have told me and what i heard this morning was chances are about two out of three that he picks larry summers. i would just close by saying even though democratic senators, a lot of them, prefer janet yellen, they will support larry summers. i believe that there's no question that larry summers could be confirmed by the senate. >> party unity wins out in the day, at the end of the day with the democrats at least.

cnbc and "the new york times" john harwood. thank you as always. >> you bet. coming up today, new york city mayor michael bloomberg and police commissioner ray kelly are filing an appeal on a recent federal judge's ruling to end the city's stop and frisk policy. what is the future for the controversial program? karen finney knows the answer and will tell us that after the break. [ dad ] so i walked into that dealer's office and you know what i walked out with? [ slurps ] [ dad ] a new passat. [ dad ] 0% apr. 60 months. done and done. [ dad ] in that driveway, is a german-engineered piece of awesome. that i got for 0% apr. good one, dad. thank you, dalton. [ male announcer ] it's the car you won't stop talking about. ever. hurry in to the volkswagen best. thing. ever. event. and get 0% apr for 60 months, now until september 3rd. that's the power of german engineering.

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today new york city is formally appealing the ruling that its stop and frisk policy is unconstitutional. keep in mind of the more than 500,000 stops, the city conducted in 2012, nearly nine in ten people targeted were either black or hispanic. karen, you on your fantastic must-see television show this week are going to be talking more about this. >> yes. >> including some areas where stop and frisk-like policies are

working, which is interesting. >> focused deterrents is a term for another approach which basically says let's take a better look at -- if we know where the crime is happening and we know who the criminals are, how do we focus on that and better engage the community to help us find those guys. there's also a program in springfield, massachusetts, where they have used some of the counterinsurgency tactics from iraq, where again you engage the community to better help you know who the criminals are. and again, that way you're engaging the community but you're not terrorizing people so people don't feel like -- because when you create that sort of antagonism, you actually make it worse. >> yeah. michael, we know that bloomberg is appealing this this afternoon. i can imagine how i would think devastating this ruling is for him in terms of his legacy as mayor that he would have put in policy something that is racist and unconstitutional. >> oh, sure, sure, it's very bad for his legacy. i'll be really interested to see how this plays out in the

campaign, which is really starting to heat up now. now all the democrats of course are against the policy as far as i know. on the republican side, i think they're for it and they'll defend it, so we're going to have a showdown this fall over not just this policy, alex, but over the question of where new york is in history and whether this -- the crime fighting -- whether the crime rate is low enough now that new york can maybe sort of start looking at other concerns, like poverty and inequality. it's going to be a big, big debate this fall. >> and nationally i think, karen, eric holder is pursuing a reduction in mandatory minimum sentencing and we're talking about voting rights and really dealing with a host of issues that are incredibly relevant to american communities and getting a fair shake in american society. >> what i hope is that it stops this national conversation about stop and frisk. if you think about it, similar to the conversation we had about the show me your papers laws in

arizona, sb-1070. if you're a latino in this country, you should reasonably be expected to be pulled over and asked for your papers because you may look mexican? that's insanity. that is not our country. and yet it is. and so i hope it broadens the conversation out for us. >> it's worth noting that over the river in newark, their policy isn't so bad. >> and they just released some statistics today that show some progress actually. and again i think they're trying to focus on transparency. how about that. >> speaking of racist, while we were on air, business insider corrected their initial reporting regarding comments made by reince priebus. the rnc chair told reporters, using the word self deportation, it's a horrific comment to make. i don't think it has anything to do with our party. when a candidate makes those comments, obviously it hurts us. he did not say, however, it is racist. so just horrific, not racist, clarification.

thank you for michael, sahil and karen. you can watch "disrupt" with karen on weekends. if everybody doesn't tune in for that show, everybody should throw their television out the window. until then find us at facebook.com/alex. andrea mitchell reports is next. [ man ] look how beautiful it is. ♪ honey, we need to talk. we do?

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that number is expected to grow as this crisis deepens, there are new questions about the united states' credibility and its impact in the region. >> it's not up to the united states to determine the future path for egypt, it's up to the egyptian people. >> spilling secrets, a new leak from edward snowden reveals that the nsa broke the rules, violating americans' privacy thousands of times per year. and the priebus ultimatum. republicans have voted to boycott nbc and cnn as debate sponsors if the networks do not scrap their hillary clinton 234ri78s. -- films. >> a network that spends millions of dollars to spotlight hillary clinton is a network with an obvious bias, and that's a network that won't be hosting a single republican primary debate.